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Presentation to Joint Oireachtas Committee

SIPTU's National Industrial Secretary, Michael Halpenny, and Regional Secretary, Patricia King, made the following presentation to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance and the Public Service in July 2004.

SIPTU's State Agency Membership

SIPTU's membership is exclusively in the State agency sector where we represent 1,359 workers affected by decentralisation.  Our membership is spread across 20 agencies - some of which are among the most decentralised organisations in the country already - for example FAS, Enterprise Ireland and the Legal Aid Board.

SIPTU’s Response to Decentralisation

In principle SIPTU is not opposed to decentralisation or balanced regional development. However, the over-riding principle of voluntarism is the key to any such move. The current proposals put forward by the Government deny the voluntary option for our members employed in State agencies.

Terms and Conditions of Employment

Employees in State agencie are not civil servants. Their contracts of employment and employment rights are much different to those of civil servants.  The Civil Service has one employer, whereas the State agency sector has over 20 separate and distinct employers.  Every agency has a separate specialist remit with a requirement for particular specialists skill sets. Many agencies are already regionalised, for example FAS, Teagasc, BIM, EI, Comhairle, etc.

Transferability

There has never been a culture of transferability between the State agencies and most certainly not between agency workers and civil service workers. The Department of Finance spent decades emphasising the separation between State agency workers and civil servants and has always sought to maintain the difference between the two.

SIPTU Members' View

Our members' view on decentralisation is based on the belief that they are being presented with a “fait accompli” - with no staff engagement in a partnership model.  There have been four meetings with the Department of Finance with little serious engagement. Employers are being asked to draw up implementation plans despite the fact that all of the compelling evidence to date is that virtually no staff are interested in moving.  This is confirmed by the State agencies' own surveys of staff - in addition to Union polling.

SIPTU’s Boycott of Central Applications Facilility (CAF)

It is our view that this is not a voluntary process. The legal, contractual and industrial relations issues are not addressed by this mechanism. We have got legal advice that the provisions of Section 7 (2) (a) of the Redundancy Payments Act 1967 stipulate that dismissal by reason of redundancy arises where the employer ceases to carry out their business in the place where the employee is employed.  This clearly presents a major legal obstacle to the proposals and even co-operation with the CAF could compromise our members’ legal entitlements. In carrying out the boycott, our members made an informed decision. 

CAF Results Analysis

Results for the State agency sector tell their own story and bear out SIPTU’s analysis. For example out of 2,249 jobs to be decentralised in State agencies, only 46 employees from Dublin have opted to follow their job. Only 53 people from Dublin and elsewhere have expressed an interest to redeploy within their agency out of the total. As few as 141 in the State agencies in the whole country have expressed an interest in relocating.

Conclusions

The current process is totally unsuitable to the State agency sector and lacks any coherence. No business rationale has been advanced to support the proposals for the State agencies' involvement in the plan and no thought given to the impact on service provision. The current process will lead to significant corporate memory loss. The inevitable result will be a skills loss and a 'brain-drain' and an undermining of the specialist nature of all of the agencies involved. There are fundamental legal and contractual problems which of themselves present an impediment to the proposals. The Government should, therefore, abandon proposals for the decentralisation of the State agencies.




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